> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://kudithipudi.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Interesting (infrastructure) tidbits about Groupon
- URL: https://kudithipudi.org/interesting-infrastructure-tidbits-about-groupon/
- Published: 2011-10-23T14:11:18.000Z
- Updated: 2011-10-23T14:11:18.000Z
- Description: I am attending the Camp DevOps conference in Chicago over the weekend and one of the speakers was Zack Steinkamp. Zack manages the operations tools group...
- Author: admin
- Tags: Fun, Technology, Uncategorized, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-08-23 02:32

I am attending the [Camp DevOps](http://campdevops.com/?ref=kudithipudi.org) conference in Chicago over the weekend and one of the speakers was [Zack Steinkamp](http://steinkamp.us/?ref=kudithipudi.org). Zack manages the operations tools group in addition to information security at [Groupon](http://www.groupon.com/?ref=kudithipudi.org). He spoke about a custom configuration management tool called “roller” ([http://steinkamp.us/campdevops.pdf](http://steinkamp.us/campdevops.pdf?ref=kudithipudi.org)) that is used at Groupon. He said the tool is scheduled to be open sourced soon. roller is very similar to puppet, chef, bcfg2 etc. I am not sure if we need yet another configuration management tool, but Zack made a good point for why there is a need for a simpler and secure configuration management tool.

Anyways.. this post is not about roller, but rather about some tidbits that Zack shared about Groupon’s infrastructure in the talk

- Groupon started out with \~100 servers
  - The operations function was outsourced to a third party
  - No automation in place.. all servers were “handcrafted”
- Currently running \~1000 servers in 6 locations (globally)
  - Building their own data center
- Running 4 different Linux distros in prod
  - [Gentoo](http://www.gentoo.org/?ref=kudithipudi.org)
  - [Unbuntu](http://www.ubuntu.com/?ref=kudithipudi.org)
  - [CentOS](http://centos.org/?ref=kudithipudi.org)
  - [RHEL](http://www.redhat.com/?ref=kudithipudi.org)
- Currently using [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/?ref=kudithipudi.org) and another cloud provider
- Not a hugh believer in public cloud for future expansion
  - Zack spoke about how the lack of consistency in the IO/CPU performance is an issue on the public clouds
- Does not heavily use [virtualization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization?ref=kudithipudi.org) in production
- Uses Nagios for monitoring
- SW Architecture
  - Started out as a “[wordpress](http://wordpress.org/?ref=kudithipudi.org)” blog
  - Then migrated into a Rails App
  - Currently the Rails App is huge
    - Moving towards [SOA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented%5Farchitecture?ref=kudithipudi.org) using [Rails](http://rubyonrails.org/?ref=kudithipudi.org), Java and [Clojure](http://clojure.org/?ref=kudithipudi.org)
  - [MySQL](http://www.mysql.com/?ref=kudithipudi.org) is the DB